Damn trees, stealing our oxegyn (or whatever it is they do) and leaping out in front of motorists.
You’d think a Navy man would know better than to come onto dry land. Frigates are rarely menaced by child-killing eucalypti.
Arbor Day of the Dead
Category: nathan marsak
Grevillea & 104th To-day
There’s still the detectable odor of petrochemical wafting around what’s now the Iglesia del Buen Samaritano, Inc. But that’s probably product of the various attached gashuffing teens (who beat a quick exit out of frame at the production of camera).
7290 Sunset To-day
Man. Now there’s a place where you can get your kicks. Unfortunately, such shenanigans and the building what spawned them are no more. Tabu was razed and in its place, come 1963, rose a magnificent googiefied Pioneer Chicken, with a three-arched roof that mimicked Stanley Meston’s 1952 McDonald’s prototype.
Of course, now that’s gone as well. It was razed a couple months ago for whatever this damn thing is going to be. I’ve got some feelers out, and I’ll post a Pioneer shot if and when I get one.
And He Could Bring Flowers
Nothing like keeping a grisly date. Perhaps li’l Len could have visited the crushed remains of this young lad, dented something fierce by his sporty convertible.
334 N. Normandie, To-day
Your tax dollars at work. Call it subsidized housing, or call it the projects, Mrs. Waterman’s nudie-cutie apartment building has been razed to build “Beverly Manor,†a 59-unit Section 8 & 236 complex. This uninspired pile appears to be one of those thrown up in the 80s by HCD, LAHD and CACTC (and, if you live there, your rent is paid by HUD, CALHFA & HACLA. It’s fun!) Marvel at the “Southwest†pastel colors and fake red-tile roof. Of course, this could be a prewar structure, bastardized to such an extent that nothing but its massing gives us a clue to its vintage.
Perhaps Marie the Hotcha Lady lived in something more like this, just up the street at 400 Normandie. A restrained Spanish Eclectic, with, miraculously, the entirety of its original double-hung and pre-1923 inward-opening casement windows. Spanish tile, as opposed to Mission, and nice balconets. The roofline shows Mission conceit, and the corner quoins and quoined arch are a welcome touch. Ah, the scent of the Panama-California Expo is in the air.
1313 Olympic To-day
The hustle and bustle of the produce district is still felt in the 1918 Terminal Market at Central and 7th, and the 1909 City Market at 9th and San Pedro, though the building that housed 1313 Olympic has been replaced by this modern distribution center. And the Hebraic gents who ran wholesale produce in Los Angeles have also been largely replaced.
Perhaps the trouser-snatchers thought they were in the garment district, which is in fact located five blocks west.
1877 West 38th Street, To-day
If Luedeman was so hot to play dry cleaner, he could have used Stoddard’s Solvent, introduced in 1926; considerably less flammable than gasoline. Or some delicious nonflammable perchloroethylene, 1930s darling of the Industry. Tell me what, if anything, has the allure and majesty of an afternoon of dry cleaning?
Where Luedeman ignited:
(-gone are the wooden columnar ionic porch supports, and there’s bevel clapboard under that stucco, but you get the picture.)
Dry cleaning? Wash without water, huh? Of course, look where it got that Ed Crane fellow.
825 North Wilcox, To-day
As I drove up Wilcox I was warmed at the thought of seeing the construction inherent in any structure whereby a bullet can pass through a person, and through the floor and through the ceiling below. (Of course, it may have been a firearm of some insane caliber, which made me smile inwardly all the more.)
Quickly pulled from my reverie as I saw Fain & Lavine’s Hollywood hangout had been destroyed as surely as had Mrs. Odman’s belief in a good night’s sleep–
The Peeper of Chapel Ave
Nice of Bennett to provide a piece of paraphilia to today’s proceedings-What is it Auden said of the voyeur? Peeping Toms are never praised, like novelists or bird watchers, for their keenness of observation?
Was Jim just a hapless, callow youth, or drooling maniac? Perhaps he was, as was the original Tom, looking for Lady Godiva. He was simply looking for her in the Cuddy’s window. Since gone. I’d put this complex in the mid-50s.
And Bennett’s house, which contained the one neighborhood window into which he did not peer, has been replaced as such:
Slack Rd. To-day
Slack. Yes. A lady just a-sittin’ on her rocker, smoking the day away. Now that’s slack. Slack Road, though, is no more, having become Michael Hunt. Whoever the hell that was. Ohhh-Mike Hunt. I get it. Real mature, El Monte.
A house of Slack…little bench behind some picket railing, the perfect place to smoke and be smoked.
(Actually, that spire in the distance is the 1956 Epiphany Catholic church, at which Michael Hunt was the first pastor. The street was renamed for him in 1985.)